Self described leftists in your feed stanning dictators and parroting right wing culture war conspiracies like pizzagate? Turns out there’s a story behind that. Mia Wong, Garrison, and Robert Evans doing some fascinating work this week on It Could Happen Here.

Many of us have long since known that morality is entirely absent from how the world is run. We know that people are casually dehumanised in order to be exploited and oppressed by governments and transnational corporations.

But this genocide in Gaza is something else. The sheer gleeful cruelty the IDF has engaged in is beyond belief. All of it, well-documented by many reputable independent sources. Many Israeli and some American figureheads are open about their intent to ethnically cleanse and massacre the Palestinian people. You need but look at how Israelis discuss this situation internally. Hamas does not factor into their strategy. It’s all about killing as many Palestinians as possible, terrorising whoever they can’t kill into fleeing.

The horror is on full display. The evidence is overwhelming. Even the US political elite is starting to worry, and yet…

It doesn’t change. The Israelis will not stop, will not even try to hide their brutality and their genocidal intent. Nothing means anything. No life is worth anything.

If you have something the US elite or their allies want, your life, your history, your culture is forfeit.

And they will not stop at Palestine. Foucault’s Boomerang will come crashing back into the faces of those who actively supported this genocide or passively swallowed what the IDF told them.

We will all come to feel the ramifications of this.

This must be stopped.

Aside from all the other reasons it's spineless and morally bankrupt, the idea that dems will be better domestically is such memoryholing of the 2020 uprising like...do you not know about the police exchange programs? Biden & his admin supporting Cop City? Foucault's boomerang???

I love how andor applies Foucault's boomerang to the republic/the empire. All the BS andor dealt with as a kid at the hands of ‘the empire’ happened while it was still the republic. Characters use the words almost interchangeably when talking about the past. The republics turn to fascism didn’t spawn cruelty where none existed, it just brought home what they were already doing to places like ferrix and kenari and increased the scale. 

That guy who crashes on kenari and whose first instinct upon seeing people in unfamiliar garb is to immediately commit murder (he doesnt even give a warning or check to see if they speak basic). He worked for the republic - either thats standard republic operating procedure or he’s so hopped up on republic era colonial propaganda that his first instinct is to shoot ‘strange’ ‘foreign’ people.

The republic always sucked, now it just sucks at home too.

telling the armed target security guards about foucaults boomerang but i think it's just confusing them and making them mad

kbeauty is one of the weirder examples of foucault’s boomerang I think

Damn that boomerangs sure can Foucault (learning about the use of private military at standing rock)

I fucking hate baizuo who just regurgitate the conspiracy theories Pompeo came up with and pretend like they came up with these Smart Objective opinions against the Authoritarian CPC by themselves

Like the majority of headlines about China you read during the 2017-2020 came out of the mouth of a serial liar (moreso than government officials usually are), ex CIA director who was trying to move the genocidal Iraq War further east. Now that the saber rattling has turned down (because it was an unsustainable escalation of extreme lies) you idiots believe the Biden/Democrats are "colluding" with China (Don't laugh!) to... destroy America? Get rich? Lose elections? The USA has seeded its own destruction. Its own greed, bloodlust, insecurities, and short-sightedness has led it to this hell we're currently in. Every one of your politicians is a lying, backstabbing careerist who is infinitely more concerned with their salary than with challenging imperialism. Your civilization is a resounding failure in everything it set out to do, except for murder and theft.

In the Art of War, Sunzi writes that you win by capitalizing off of the mistakes your enemy makes. Essentially: Minimize your mistakes, wait patiently for your enemy to make mistakes, and capitalize on that. Two generals who are perfect with equal armies will stalemate, it's only by the mistake (or poor fortune) of one that the other will gain a temporary upper hand.

That's oversimplified because this is a Tumblr post, but that's basically the idea. People indoctrinated into the Cult of America think they're at the end of history, that this is their god-given prerogative to annihilate any alternative system of politics or economic governance for "freedom." As such they've been stretching their empire further and further, butchering more with every step they take. They've killed so much that they can't see anything but blood, spreading their disgusting Manifest Destiny to every corner of the world that doesn't want it in order to privatize and steal their country's assets. With such a violent, proactive, and aggressive Empire like the United States, it's easy for China to simply sit back and provide an alternative the the United States' imperial savagery and massacre. One that engages in bilateral diplomacy instead of unilateral demands, and that doesn't pretend to know what's best for another country.

Americans have never cared about how many non-Americans they butcher, never-mind that, the moral point cannot be made because you cannot moralize a demon. You cannot moralize an empire caked in the blood of millions of corpses all across the world. Americans don't care, they think it's WORTH it, because they're far removed from the chaos they're creating and thoroughly convinced by the corporate media, who just literally regurgitates whatever the State Department says without the slightest iota of criticism. They only start whining when Foucault's boomerang comes flying back and smashes into their face.

They told us to never forget 9/11, but they never even bothered telling us about Abu Ghraib in the first place

Sorry y'all this one's depressing

So foucaults boomerang

Idea that the colonial state inevitably brings the weapons of colonialism back to bear against it's own citizens

Do you think drone strikes or mercenaries will hit the protests first?

Techno-apocalyptica & Schizophrenia

Spoilers for Fallout

The rational part of my brain recognizes that the timing is too close for that poor guy who self immolated in front of Trump's court proceedings to have seen it or know much about it. However, I'm struck by the big reveal of Vault-tec conspiring with other corporations, oligarchs really, to end the world so they can all be the unquestioned absolute rulers of their Vaults and then take a "free market approach" to rebuilding civilization. It is unsettling the degree to which this is reminiscent of the theses of the now deceased gentleman's manifesto, an admittedly deeply troubled document full of an inability to accept that despoilers and despots might arrive at similar processes by similar motives independent of one another, or the inability to distinguish between cautionary tales and propaganda.

Having skimmed that manifesto and then watching Fallout, it does make me wonder. Could there be ideologues and plutocrats who have talked themselves into razing entire economies and livelihoods, perhaps literally through violence, under the idea that this would be "creative destruction?"

Unfortunately the answer is actually yes and its no paranoid delusion since this is the fervent belief of those among the fever swamp religious right who believe that prodding Israel into first rebuilding their great temple and then getting eradicated for their trouble will kickstart the End Times. This is one of those instances where I think materialist philosophy and materialist explanations simply cannot account for the elite doing things that are against what a rational person would believe is against their interests: whether its starting wars, pumping money into obvious scams like NFTs, the metaverse, and now their new religion: AI; but ultimately even the rich are simply a variable number of monkeys who happen to own a stupendous number of typewriters mindlessly pounding away trying to create value.

It is fashionable on the materialist left to assume the rich know what they're doing and are pursuing their self interest at our expense in a lawful, rational evil way.

Unless they're not. Unless they're possessed of grandiose and mystical delusions, a spiritual level belief in the goodness and wisdom of the Free Market, or in a God that is whispering in their ear and confirming all of their biases.

What is clear to me is that Max Azzarello was a mentally ill man desperately trying to make sense of a deranged world that seems to offer cruelty from the top. He deserved intervention long before he met his fate. He deserved a kinder world. He definitely misjudged Matt Groening. He tried to find order in the madness of our variable number of unhinged billionaires blindly groping for profit and indifferent to who they smash. I disagree with that order. I disagree with him ending his life. I pity him, for I think our society and its cruel oligarchs failed him.

I think he was broken by a reality that was too grim to face and he resorted to connecting threads that had no business being connected, but the theses of mad oligarchs plotting to destroy the world because they know their positions are untenable, that they are unwilling or unable to live peaceably and sustainably with the goose that lays the golden eggs, and thus absolute rule must logically be their endgame since eventually, one would assume, perpetually failing upwards, scam after scam, like Sam Altman of Open AI, or Elon Musk, must cease to be satisfying.

What if they're not actually content to simply jockey for position on the leaderboard of capitalism, admittedly while trampling the rest of us? What if in their bones they think they're the only ones fit to rule and merely influencing society by creating incentives and disincentives, creating the structures we bounce around inside of, is not enough?

I think Mr. Azzarello was wrong about the tech oligarchs for the most part. Except for the ones who are mixing a toxic stew of Laissez Faire, Francoism, and their own personal bespoke interpretations of the Bible.

Those people are real, some of them are quite powerful, and I do think they'd end the world if they believed sincerely that it would kickstart the Rapture under the assumption Christ will anoint them as his ministers since they proved to be oh so good at wealth management.

I'm fine, really, I have no intent to harm myself or anyone literal or proverbial enemies of mankind. Please don't send that bot to inquire after me, unless Tumblr is going to start letting it speak aloud and sound like Matt Berry for an upgrade. That would actually be pretty rad.

Oh for fuck’s sake. So on the nose it hurts to look at let alone imagine seeing in real life. Fuck off, fascist police state!

Contextual elements

Before presenting the lyrics of this new record, we wanted to write the following text as a clarification, in order to explain our intention and to put words into context.

All the present lyrics deal with the abuses and acts of violence perpetrated by the French State within three of its Colonial Empires and territories: Indochina (1887-1954), Algeria (1830-1962) and Cameroon (1916-1960). These lyrics are adaptations of excerpts taken from two books: “Les crimes de l’armée française : Algérie 1954-1962” by Pierre Vidal-Naquet (2001), and “La guerre du Cameroun : l’invention de la Françafrique, 1948-1971,” by Thomas Deltombe, Manuel Domergue and Jacob Tatsitsa (2016). The choice of focusing on these three specific territories is not insignificant. Indeed, we decided to follow the logical continuity caused by the succession of these three-armed conflicts.

The lyrics were written with the objective of raising awareness about the reality of the occupation and colonial violence that were systematically perpetrated throughout all French colonial territories during several centuries, and this, officially, until 1962.

They also reflect the organization and philosophy of the colonial system. They highlight a side of French History that sometimes remains unknown, poorly known, or even denied. As in 2009, when Prime Minister François Fillon during an official trip in Yaoundé – capital city of Cameroon – declared that the involvement of the French army in the Cameroon War was nothing but “pure fabrication.” Beyond the fact that this war did actually happen, it laid the groundwork for French neo-colonialism through the invention and creation of the Françafrican1 system.

Can we understand the present French society without taking into account its connections with the old colonial Empire? In 1976, Michel Foucault underlined that colonization “also had a considerable boomerang effect on the mechanisms of power in the West, and on the apparatuses, institutions, and techniques of power. [...] And the result was that the West could practice something resembling colonization, or an internal colonialism, on itself.” Colonization was the experimental field of power systems that would end up by profoundly transforming European modern societies. 

Beyond the apparatuses of power that are insuring the republican governance, the present time connects with this History through a double movement.

 The first movement identified by Bancel and Blanchard is the existing continuity in terms of social representations made by “native-born French people” towards populations with an “immigrant background” and coming from old colonized territories. Indeed, representations of the “typical indigenous person” are still deeply rooted in some people’s minds. They resurge regularly to the hazards of current events. The rise of a post-Arab Spring radical Islamism or the European migrant crisis are popular topics for a part of the conservative right and the conservative left.In 1954, the Algerian War brought back in mainland France the negative stereotypes towards Arabs: “Cruelty, treachery, dissimulation, fanaticism, barbarism, etc. We find these images and stereotypes on the posters and leaflets published by the French army in Algeria and in France, but also, in magazines, such as Paris-Match or Radar. It is a real shock for part of the French population to realize that despite all ‘our’ efforts, ‘they’ refuse to become civilized and continue to display their differences. Eight decades of colonial propaganda have deluded the public opinion with multiple colonial myths that end up being discordant with the politico-military situation at the time: active cooperation of local populations, modernization in constant progression, increasing hygiene and education rates. Aside from the denunciation of the eternal communist plot, we postulate on the feudal conceptions of ‘fellaghas2’, and their atavistic obscurantism. In short, we identify them as partisans of a step backwards that would wipe out all the generous efforts made by mainland France. Ultimately, shouldn’t we acknowledge that the independence in countries like Algeria or even Guinea and Indochina, is the actual image of countries aiming for disaster and going back to their tribal demons, to barbarism, and, in short, to their pre-colonial ages... in the heart of darkness?” (Blanchard, 2014) Isn’t the “coffee shops war3”, which brought into conflict partisans of the FLN and the MNA in the suburbs of Lille or Paris, from 1954 and up until the end of the Algerian War, another proof of their barbarism? Isn’t the gratuitous violence during juvenile riots against police forces and French institutions that burst regularly since the 1980s another proof of their ungratefulness and refusal to be integrated? The several urban policies that target, via theirs “anti-hot summer” plans (ed. read “anti-riot and anti-discontent summer” plans), young boys with colonial immigration backgrounds have for objectives “the civic moralization of pre-delinquents – their compliance with republican values.” (Bonnemaison, 1990) “The objective is indeed to assimilate these imperfect French children, to first locate them, define them, separate them from their parents, and transform them far away.” (Jablonka, 2013)

The second movement is the existing continuity in terms of social representations made by French people with immigrant and colonial backgrounds towards law enforcement agencies and the French State. After the “riots” of 2005, Malika Mansouri identified and analyzed these “cysts” specific to the French colonial history. “Cysts” that nowadays continue to structure both the relation to the past, via the family’s history, and the relation to the present time, via the transposition through space and time of some young inhabitants with “foreign origins.” (2013) The relationships they have with the police, the world of work and school feed feelings of inferiority, disrespect, injustice, lack of recognition, as well as academic and professional discriminations. The racist behaviors and acts of violence that their relatives suffer from, the general disillusion towards political promises and tirades about Equality and Fraternity are elements that are passed on from generation to generation and that shape the conflicting relationship with France. 

“Tarik is currently in his third year of Psychology Studies. […] The school system and the police are omnipresent in his discourse. He describes the middle schools located in ‘Priority Education Zones’ as machines made to ‘disorient’ young people by pushing them almost systematically towards short studies. He suspects that this specific orientation choice from teachers is probably ‘unconscious,’ but that the consequence is nevertheless really serious as it results in demotivating a large majority of young people who finally end up being in school failure. […] Tarik doesn’t tolerate the conflation made between delinquents and foreigners or assimilated foreigners. He is himself systematically the victim of such conflations. Tarik continues by reaffirming that ‘immigrants’ are ‘confined’ in ‘prison-like districts,’ which is convenient for the State, as it wants to keep these populations under its control. […] For his mother who has kept her ‘hatred for the settlers,’ the police would have been the first French colonizer that came to ‘tarnish’ her ‘land.’ Therefore, the younger generations would feel a ‘hatred of cops,’ feeling that have its source in the ‘collective unconsciousness,’ and that would result in the assimilation of the picture of yesterday’s colonizer with today’s police forces.” (Mansouri, 2013, pp. 81-83).

The colonial heritage is then present “on both sides.” If the post-colonial theories certainly can’t be sufficient in order to explain the issues that animate the relationship between the French State and its citizens originally coming from old colonies, excluding these issues and proclaiming that we are “all equal” is nothing else than burying our heads in the sand. We are not all equal. 

Colonial history is anchored in the violence created by power dynamics and patterns of domination/submission. Such violence is the result of a civilization that, for a really long time, has considered itself as morally and culturally superior to others. Thus, such civilization ended up classifying and hierarchizing foreign people according to their value. The Enlightenment spirit that was contributing to and influencing the French Revolution could have, or, as one might think, should have put an end to the French colonial system and its expansion. Paradoxically, the latter was strengthened. The values of the Republic and its belief in the universal aspect of its principles have justified the use of the worst methods in the name of peace and progress. Is it the paradox of an unfinished revolution? “Peace to our neighbors! Anathema to the French name! Eternal hatred of France! Let this be our cry!” proclaimed in 1804 the declaration of independence of the Haitian Republic. All subjects of the colonial Empire are considered at equal distance from the point of reference: the white republican man of mainland France. “We attribute to the populations of the Empire some common paradigms. Those paradigms do not completely iron out the differences that exist between these different populations, but distinguish them from the role models of the white man, the mainlander, the conqueror. […] All the official iconography tends to demonstrate that an assimilation policy would not transform the colonized populations into ‘little French people’ before centuries. […] In other words, assimilation is applicable for lands, not for people, except of course for an elite described as ‘educated’ that can occupy some high and important functions in mainland France, such as Biaise Diagne (first African deputy who represented Senegal in the French Parliament in 1914), or later, Félix Houphouët-Boigny (Minister during the Fourth Republic). The promotion of this elite becomes the tangible proof of the validity of the system. System that is capable of perfectly assimilating the most ‘brilliant’ indigenous people” (Blanchard, 2014).

You might think that all this is old story and that people have actually changed their minds and evolved regarding those issues. But in 2005, a project for a Memorial Act promoted by minister of the Armed Forces Michèle Alliot-Marie was stating that "school courses should recognize in particular the positive role of the French presence overseas, notably in North Africa, and treat the history and the sacrifices of veterans of the French army originating from these territories in a properly appreciative way.” In 2018, some polemists have no problem to publicly show their support for old actors of French Algeria who “died for France,” and to state that: “this Mr. Audin4 […] I think that he would have deserved to be executed by receiving 12 bullets.”

The Algerian War and colonization are still taboo subjects in France. They generate strong polemics and divide the French population. Kept in the dark, these topics deserve that we take the time to go back in detail on some facts: on what France did within its colonies; on the ideological foundations of colonial violence; on the nature of the relation between the French colonial Empire and indigenous populations. While reading these narratives and testimonies of old conscripts, everyone will be able to judge the validity and legitimacy of France’s intentions, as well as the fundamental principles of the French republican model of integration. 

Our first two records were focusing on law enforcement practices, in the broad sense of the term: polis. It is important to understand that what you have here is nothing less than a logical continuation. These lyrics allow us to discern preventive and coercive logics – specific to the colonial system – that have not completely disappeared within law enforcement, educational and social French institutions, as well as among the practices of their representatives. Such logics still structure part of the relationship maintained between the State and the inhabitants of popular districts from colonial immigration descent, or assimilated.    

What we name Françafrique is the french postcolonial presence and influence in Africa.

Members of the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale : liberation front during the Algerian war)

Partisans of the FLN and of the MNA (Mouvement National Algérien, the other main algerian liberation front) were also at war during that period. The conflict extended to mainland France, where they both used to attack their enemies on the café terraces.

Maurice Audin was a member of the Algerian Communist Party. He was arrested by the French army during the Battle of Algiers on June 11, 1957 and died during his captivity, murdered.

waffled back and forth on whether i needed a fascism and imperialism tag or if i could just use 'yellow-brown alliances'. final verdict is that it is useful but strictly when talking about foucault's boomerang and/or the revanchist imperialism of """proletarian nations"""

It should never be forgotten that while colonization, with its techniques and its political and juridical weapons, obviously transported European models to other continents, it also had a considerable boomerang effect on the mechanisms of power in the West, and on the apparatuses, institutions, and techniques of power. A whole series of colonial models was brought back to the West, and the result was that the West could practice something resembling colonization, or an internal colonialism, on itself.

Michel Foucault 

The 5 Types Of Narcissists You’ll Meet On Tinder

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/happiness/the-5-types-of-narcissists-youll-meet-on-tinder/

The 5 Types Of Narcissists You’ll Meet On Tinder

Gabriel Baker

Online dating is a bit of a hunting ground for narcissists, but perhaps no dating app attracts more narcissists than one focused solely on instant gratification – Tinder. Here are the five types of narcissists you’re likely to encounter on this popular dating app (and of course, off of it too!):

1. The somatic narcissist.

Let’s face it, Tinder is a wee bit superficial (maybe just a little more than a wee bit) and it has a reputation of hosting highly attractive people – including ones obsessed with their own appearance. The somatic narcissist is one of the easiest types of narcissists to spot on this app: he’s the amateur bodybuilder pumping iron and flexing his biceps in a mirror selfie, hoping you won’t notice the fact that he’s dead inside.

He could also be the hunky businessman who always looks just a bit too polished (wait, why are his eyebrows so beautifully groomed and his hair styled better than yours?). Or, she could the gorgeous, vain, married woman looking to have her thrills on the side. Somatic narcissists tend to be obsessed with their sexual performance as well as their physique – you may find them performing in a very theatrical manner in the bedroom or going out of their way to demonstrate their sexual prowess. These types of narcissists are obsessed with physical appearance, sex, power and the intersection among all three. They have no qualms about bedding multiple people – sometimes, at the same time.

2. The cerebral narcissist.

Wait…are we still talking about Tinder? Tinder tinder? Yep. Cerebral narcissists – those who emphasize their minds rather than their bodies to gain attention – exist on this app (and off it) too. The cerebral narcissist is the one who speaks in long monologues about Proust and Foucault. He (or she) belittles your thoughts and ideas and presents himself as someone of superior intelligence. Cerebral narcissists are likely to be clutching their pearls or peering down at you behind their monocle every time they speak.

The cerebral narcissist may be highly successful or accomplished in some way – but rather than using this success to better himself, he uses it to self-aggrandize. He believes himself to be “above” petty human affairs like basic decency, romance, dating and sex, preferring to focus only on matters of the mind (but secretly, he may also harbor a few twisted sexual fantasies – it’s all a projection of his own crap). The cerebral narcissist employs “logic” and “reason” to rationalize his way out of everything, including his own unsavory behavior and absurd beliefs (usually centered on misogyny, nihilism and a general disdain for humanity). He thinks he’s being profound and existential, when in reality, he’s trying way too hard to perform his pseudo-intellectualism. Unfortunately, no one in the audience (or his match list) wants to listen.

3. The covert, vulnerable narcissist.

This narcissist seems to be the sensitive, caring type on the onset – but this is just a mask for his or her haughtiness and contempt. Beneath the veneer of seeming friendliness and quiet introversion, the covert narcissist is secretly competing with you and planning ways to put you down. They are hypersensitive and lash out easily when their egos are injured. They have delusions of persecution and are highly accusatory and defensive. They are also very likely to lash out in narcissistic rage if they are rejected or feel slighted in any way.

Covert narcissists also tend to be pathologically envious because they have feelings of inadequacy mixed with an excessive sense of entitlement. As a result, they sneak in subtle digs at your appearance, your career, your hobbies – what have you – just to test and push your boundaries on dates and to gain the psychological upper hand. They may create love triangles to get you to compete for their attention. Mind you, covert narcissists do not have to be attractive or appealing to do this – many of them have perfected this form of “negging” as part of their pick-up artistry because it’s one of the only ways they can gain power over their targets. These types of narcissists rely on mind games, backhanded compliments, hurtful jokes, and hot-and-cold behavior to “court” their victims. They love-bomb you with affection, only to withdraw and compel you to ‘chase’ them. Solution? Never chase after a covert narcissist – just run.

4. The grandiose, malignant narcissist.

This is perhaps the most dangerous narcissist you can meet on a dating app or off of it. The malignant narcissist has a firm belief in his or her superiority. Malignant narcissists ‘get off’ on power rather than pleasure. They enjoy control to the extreme. They are the ones likely to commit physical and/or sexual assault. They are emotionally abusive and highly parasitic, usually targeting multiple victims to gain access to their resources. Their psychopathic tendencies make them dangerous predators and rather sadistic dating partners in general. Stay away from these types of narcissists whether in real life or online – even just one date with them can make you go down a rabbit hole of self-destruction.

5. The garden-variety “narcissist.”

This “narcissist” is lower on the spectrum and does not really meet the criteria for full-fledged narcissism, but sure does meet the criteria for full-on jerk. He or she still may have some splashes of empathy here or there, but it’s not enough to make them a suitable, emotionally available mate. Garden variety narcissistic types are usually players who are just in it for the sex. They are commonly referred to as “f*ckboys” or “f*ckgirls” (these are the clinical terms, of course). They may not be sadistic, but they’re fluent in mixed signals and selfishness.  They use people and dispose of them with alarming ease; they are also known to mislead their targets into believing they want more, only to disappear without a trace and boomerang back when they get bored again. Garden-variety narcissistic types are not nearly as dangerous as grandiose ones, but they are also not worth spending your time or swipe on.

          *No tinderellas or tinderfellas were harmed in the creation of this article.